Well, good morning and welcome to Christian Life Academy. And this morning is the first Sunday of December already, so we are once again in our systematic theology track, which means that we are once again exploring our confession of faith, the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession, and we have made it all the way to Unit 2. We began with Unit 1 of the Confession, which was First Principles, and that included our doctrine of Scripture. How do we know the things that we know about God, about man, about salvation? and then the doctrine of God as he is ad intra or in himself in the Trinity and then God ad extra his acts external to himself and so we looked at God's decree and how God's decree is carried out in creation and in providence and then we looked in chapter 6 at the fall of man into sin and so we looked at the state of man the condition of man as part of God's decree to bring us grace and mercy and all these things. So now we're moving into chapter seven, which as you can see is titled Of God's Covenant. Now this is the first chapter of what we will call unit two of the confession. Unit two is much larger than unit one. It encompasses the chapters beginning in chapter seven all the way through chapter 20 of the confession. And unit two is largely concerned with the plan, accomplishment, and application of redemption by way of covenant. And so we're just simply titling unit two, The Covenant. And so we can see that chapter seven, the first chapter in this unit, is titled Of God's Covenant. And so uh... that the first chapter of the unit is sort of setting that the groundwork for the rest of the unit it's going to talk to us this morning about covenant and then as we get into the rest of the chapters the chapters are going to deal with specific aspects of the covenant and so what we see is that the organization of Now, this section here is that we begin with the covenant, then we talk about Christ, the mediator of the covenant, and then of free will, and I'll tell you why in a minute, and then effectual calling, justification, adoption, sanctification, saving faith, repentance unto life and salvation, good works, perseverance, assurance, law, and gospel. Now, one of the things that you might notice about this organization in our confession is that this seems out of order. If we were to look on the back wall at our poster of the Ordo Salutis, we would recognize that this and that don't match. They're not in the same order. We have effectual calling, justification, adoption, sanctification, and then saving faith. So why is the confession seemingly out of order? Well, the reason is is that it's organized in a specific manner. What we have is We have the first three chapters here of God's covenant, of Christ the mediator, and of free will. So we're dealing with the covenant, the mediator of the covenant, and then the condition of mankind in relation to the covenant. That's what the chapter on free will will deal with. And then what we have is chapters 10 all the way through 13. are one section, 14 through 18 are the next section, and then 19 and 20 are their own section. Chapters 10 through 13 present the covenant, remember this is the covenant, or of God's covenant, singular. Which covenant is it that we're concerned with here? The covenant of grace, the new covenant. So chapters 10 through 13 are presenting to us this doctrine of the covenant of grace, from the perspective of God. Effectual calling, this is something God does. Justification, an act of God. Adoption, an act of God. Sanctification, the work of the Holy Spirit. Chapters 14 through 18 are the doctrine of the covenant from the perspective of man. Saving faith, that's where we start. Repentance, then good works, then perseverance of the saints. Notice it's not the preservation of the saints from God's perspective, rather it's the perseverance of the saints from man's perspective. And then the assurance of grace and salvation. And then the last two chapters are law and gospel that show us this distinction that we must maintain between law and gospel. This is one of the features of Reformed theology is to maintain this distinction between those two things. So the confession is organized in a systematic way that's different than the Ordo Salutis, but it's done on purpose in order to present the covenant to us, the doctrine of the covenant, in a particular manner. So we'll begin with chapter 7 of God's covenant, and again remember that we're dealing with the covenant of grace. It's of God's covenant singular, and that'll become important in a few moments. And so we'll look at chapter 7 beginning with paragraph 1. The distance between God and the creature is so great that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience to him as their creator, yet they could never have attained the reward of life but by some voluntary condescension on God's part, which he hath been pleased to express by way of covenant. So, the first thing that we notice in this chapter is that we're talking about a distance between God and the creature. And the idea here is this distance that's there. Now, this is not physical distance. This is not, well, God's in heaven and that's a long ways away. But it's the distinction, the difference between the creator and that which has been created. Now, if you've read the right books or listened to the right podcasts and sermons, you may have heard these terms in the last few years, one-ism and two-ism. And this is the idea that all the other religions of the world, including the Christian cults, such as Mormonism, hold to this idea of one-ism, and that is that God and the creation are essentially the same. right, that all things are God, pantheism, or that man can become God, as in Mormonism or Buddhism, we can become one with God. So, they hold to this idea that there is not a clear distinction, not a great distance between God and the creation. Twoism, on the other hand, is an exclusive feature of Christianity that says, no, there is God and there is creation, and these two things are distinct. God is wholly unlike and completely set apart from his creation. He's altogether holy, he's incomprehensible, he is so far above his creation in power, in moral purity, in holiness, that there is this great distance not physical distance, but a distance of purity, of holiness, that it requires that if God's creatures are to have a relationship with Him, we cannot reach to Him. We cannot attain to God. Therefore, God must voluntarily condescend to us. So that's the main idea of this paragraph, but as we look at it, we see a few things here that are important for us. The first one is that this distance is so great that it says, although reasonable creatures owe obedience to him. What does it mean by reasonable creatures? Well, this shows us the interdependence of our confession and how it's interwoven with itself. Reasonable creatures is a reference back to an earlier chapter in the confession, to chapter four of the confession, where it talks about the creation of man. So, a reasonable creature is part of what it means that man is made in the image of God. So, if we go back and we look at chapter four, paragraph two, we find this. After God had made all other creatures, he created man, male and female, with reasonable and immortal souls, rendering them fit unto that life to God for which they were created, being made after the image of God in knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness." So we're made in the image of God with reasonable souls. That means we can reason, we can think through these things, and we're created after His image with knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. We know The animals don't know in the same way that we do. We're reasonable creatures. We're created in his image, right? There is a stark difference, though, chapter 7, paragraph 1 is telling us, between the image and the reality. You take a coin that has Caesar's image stamped on it. It's an image of Caesar, but it's not Caesar. It's distinct from Caesar. The same way man has the image of God stamped on him, but he's not God. He's distinct from God. He is merely a reflection of who God is. So, this reasonable creatures owe, it tells us, obedience to God as our creator. This means that what we owe to God is obedience to his moral law written on our hearts at creation, and that to do so, to obey him in this way, to keep the moral law, is merely what we are supposed to do as His creatures. It does not earn us anything. It's not meritorious. Keeping the moral law of God, the Ten Commandments, doesn't earn you anything with God. That's simply what you're supposed to do as His creature. And we can see the proof text here reference this. Luke 17 10, so likewise you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, we are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do. Not done any extra. If you keep the moral law of God, all you've done is that which reasonable creatures should have done to begin with. Job 35 verse 7, if you are righteous, what do you give him? Or what does he receive from your hand? Answer is nothing. You've just done that which you were supposed to have done as reasonable creatures. So the distance between God and the creature is so great that we cannot attain to him. He must voluntarily condescend to us. We owe him obedience. It is not meritorious. And it tells us that we could never have attained the reward of life. but by some voluntary condescension on God's part. The reward of life. Now this is very specific language. A reward is something that you've earned or merited. So keeping the moral law of God is simply what we owe him. It doesn't merit us anything. But there was a reward that we could not attain except from God condescending to us. Now this reward, this is a reference, sort of a veiled illusion, back to the garden, right? Back to the reward of life that was offered to Adam in the garden. Now, covenant is necessary for man to attain some reward from God. God had to voluntarily condescend to give us this reward. He had to voluntarily do so, right? So again, this goes back to this idea that our obedience doesn't merit us anything. If God gives us a reward, he's doing that purely out of his own goodness, out of his own free will, and not because he's bound to do so, not because we deserve it, not because we've earned it and he's now in our debt, but simply because he chose to do so out of the goodness of his will. And he condescended to do so, right? So he stooped to us. In other words, The gift of God comes to us in His infinite wisdom, but must be accommodated to our finite minds. So, He stoops down to us voluntarily. He comes down to our level because we cannot attain to Him. And He does so by way of covenant. This is how He expresses His will to us and offers us a reward, is by way of covenant. Now, covenant, of course, that we're talking about at this point is the covenant of grace, but everything that we've said so far in this paragraph could be applied to almost any covenant that God has made with man. The covenant of works with Adam in the garden could be described this way. The reward of life was something that was held out to Adam in the garden by way of covenant. Now, Nehemiah Cox, our particular Baptist forefather, described a covenant in this way. He said, The notion of a covenant adds assurance to that of a promise, since it implies a special bond of favor and friendship which belongs to federal interest and relation between the parties involved in it. The kind and benefit of this relationship is determined by the covenant itself, and its nature promises an end. And of course by end he means purpose. So what he's telling us here is that there are promises that can be made and a covenant is more than a promise because a covenant gives us an assurance of the promise. A covenant is a relationship that we've entered into with the Almighty God so that we have an assurance that this promise will be kept because it's made to us by the Almighty God who is the Lord of the covenant. So like I said, this could be applied to the covenant of works and to any of the other covenants that God makes with man, but one thing that you may notice about this chapter of our confession, which is three paragraphs, The phrase covenant of works is not contained in this chapter. This is a stark departure from the Westminster and the Savoy Declaration, both of which contain the phrase covenant of works. Our confession does not. Now, does this mean that because the Baptists removed the phrase covenant of works from chapter 7 that they were repudiating that idea? Or Greg Nichols and his work on covenant theology suggest that the Baptists were distancing themselves from the Covenant of Works. He doesn't say they were repudiating it, but he acts confused about what exactly the editors of the 1689 were doing, because they removed the phrase Covenant of Works from Chapter 7, and yet they left it in Chapter 19. So the covenant of works is used, that phrase is used in chapter 19. And so he says, well, it looks confusing. I'm not sure exactly what the Baptists were doing. They were either being inconsistent or they were just trying to put some distance between themselves and this idea of the covenant of works. I think he's wrong. I think what happened here is that they're not rejecting the doctrine, they're not distancing themselves from it, but rather they're focusing chapter 7 on the covenant. This is the chapter of God's covenant, singular, so they're focusing the attention of chapter 7 on the covenant of grace. particularly. The covenant that brings salvation to us, which is what the entirety of unit 2 from chapter 7 to chapter 20 is about, is our salvation. Not about the covenant of works with Adam in the garden. But this language, reward of life, indicates the idea of the covenant of works with Adam in the garden, and we'll see more about this as we move on. So, chapter 7, paragraph 2. Moreover, man having brought himself under the curse of the law by his fall, it pleased the Lord to make a covenant of grace with wherein He freely offers unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith in Him that they may be saved, and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto eternal life His Holy Spirit, to make them willing and able to believe." Now right at the beginning we have this word, moreover, and this is important for us because what this word is telling us is that in addition to this great distance that we saw in paragraph one between the creator and his creation. A distance that is so great that we cannot come up to God, but he must condescend to us. In addition to that distance between us and the creator, man has brought himself, we did this to ourselves, under the curse of the law. So now we have this complicating factor of sin. and the curse, right? Instead of attaining the reward of life, Adam brought the curse upon himself and all of his offspring. Now, the curse of the law, again, is a reference to the covenant of works. In fact, we see here that the proof texts are to that. In Genesis 2, 17, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die. That's the curse that was held out to Adam in the garden. Galatians 3.10, for as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse, for it is written, curse it is everyone who does not continue in all the things which are written in the book of the law to do them. And then in Romans 3, 20 and 21, therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in his sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed being witnessed by the law and the prophets. Here is a reference to the covenant of grace, right? But now the righteousness of God is being revealed. Benjamin Keech, another particular Baptist in the 17th century, said God gave a law or entered into a covenant of works with the first Adam and his seed. So you can see this language of a law given to Adam is in the minds of the particular Baptists, one and the same. It's synonymous with saying Adam was in a covenant of works. And we see this language of covenant of works throughout the writings of the 17th century Baptists. So they weren't distancing themselves from the doctrine, but they were focusing chapter 7 on the covenant of grace. So we've brought ourselves under this curse of the law. So now we've got this huge problem. God is God and we are creatures of the dirt and now we're creatures of the dirt who are sinful and in defiance against our God. And so we've got this massive hurdle to overcome. We can't earn the reward of life apart from God's voluntary condescension to us and we can't overcome this fallen state that we now find ourselves in apart from His grace. And so God, it says, was pleased. It pleased the Lord to make a covenant of grace. Covenant theology, this is one of the reasons that covenant theology is part and parcel of reformed thinking and reformed doctrine, is so at odds with the majority of dispensational belief, because covenant theology is inextricably linked to the sovereignty of God. We have a covenant of grace made with us by voluntary condescension on God's part because it pleased Him to do so. not because we can do anything. We can do nothing. We saw that in chapter 7. We're unwilling and unable to make ourselves right with God. We are dependent upon His covenant of grace. So the whole idea of covenant theology is bound up with the idea of the sovereignty of God, particularly in salvation. So it pleased the Lord to make this covenant of grace, and to do so, he freely offers salvation. Freely, again, voluntary condescension, a free offer of the gospel. God is not obligated to do this. He's not in our debt to do this because of anything that we have done. He freely offers. Who does he offer it to? He offers it to sinners, right? Not to righteous people, not to humans in a state of innocency like Adam was in the garden, but to sinners, to those who are actually in rebellion against him, God offers two things, life and salvation. Salvation, of course, is freedom from the curse of the law. That's what we need to be saved from. So, God in the covenant of grace is giving us salvation from the curse that was placed on humanity because of the covenant of works, because of Adam's sin, and he's giving us life the reward of life that Adam failed to attain under the first covenant. So the covenant of grace we can see is so much better than the covenant of works because it does not require that we are able to do and to keep God's law, but rather this is God by grace saving us saving us from the curse of our own sin and giving us the reward Adam failed to obtain. So the covenant of grace is spectacular by this standard. And he does so, it says, that he offers us this by Jesus Christ. Right? Not by any other means. We don't attain salvation and the reward of life by our own effort, but by Christ's effort on our behalf. We don't attain it by any other means, by any other Savior, but by Christ Jesus alone. Romans 8 verse 3, for what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh on account of sin. He condemned sin in the flesh. Here's the important phrase right here. God did. Again, the sovereignty of God bound up with this idea of the covenant of grace. God did it. We didn't do it. God did. God saves us. God gives us the reward of life and he does so by Christ Jesus, who is a better mediator of a better covenant. So, the idea that Christ is the means by which we obtain salvation and the reward of life as the mediator of the new covenant, this is anticipating the very next chapter, chapter 8, of Christ the mediator. And so, think about this. Adam was a representative of mankind. He was the head of that covenant for mankind. He was fully human, in a state of innocency, and then he fell into sin. But Christ, as the mediator of the new covenant, and we'll get into this next month in chapter 8, Christ is both fully man and fully God. Which means that in the new covenant, Christ fulfills all the conditions of the covenant for both parties. For God and for man. And does so perfectly. He's a much better mediator than any of the mediators of the previous covenants. And then the other proof text, Mark 16, and he said to them, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved. He who does not believe will be condemned. For God so loved the world, and here we need to understand this means in this way. This is how God loved the world. He gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. This is what God requires of us in the new covenant. Belief, faith in Christ, that's it. We believe in Christ, we're saved. Now we'll go on to talk about sanctification as a work of the Holy Spirit and of good works, as a work of man in the New Covenant, but those are the results of the New Covenant, not the stipulations for entrance into the New Covenant. So God requires faith of us, and of course this is anticipating chapter 14 of saving faith. when we get to man's response to the covenant. So, he requires faith of us that we may be saved, and he promises Here we have this idea of promises as part of the covenant, but these are promises that are assured to us because they're made to us by the Lord God Almighty, the Lord of the covenant. He promises to give unto all those that are ordained unto eternal life. Ordained, ordered by God unto eternal life. This is a reference to the elect. This is anticipation of chapter 10 of effectual calling, where God calls his people to salvation. So you can see how this is all interwoven with other portions of the confession. Backwards into chapter 4, forwards into chapter 8, chapter 10, chapter 14, etc. So God ordains us into eternal life. Now here's a very important aspect. His Holy Spirit His Holy Spirit is at work in the covenant to make us both willing and able to believe. And we saw in chapter six that we are unwilling and unable to believe as a result of our sin, as a result of total depravity. But the Holy Spirit of God makes us both willing and able to believe. He overcomes the state of man after the fall in which we were rendered unwilling and unable because of sin. The proof texts for this are Ezekiel 36. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and you will keep my judgments and do them." So, here the Holy Spirit, God Himself, is taking out our hard, unwilling, unable heart and giving us a new, tender heart towards God and He is causing us to walk in His statutes and keep His judgments. It's the work of God in our lives, the work of the Holy Spirit. So stop and think about that. The work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian is first of all to make them willing and able to believe, and then secondly, to sanctify us so that we do keep His commandments. That's the work of the Holy Spirit. So you want to know, is the Holy Spirit at work in my life? Am I being sanctified and desiring to keep God's commandments, to obey Him? If not, the Holy Spirit's not at work. So this is paragraph two. One more proof text. Your people shall be volunteers or shall be willing in the day of your power in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning you have the due of your youth. So God makes us willing and able to believe. Now paragraph three is where Our confession gets much more complicated here in chapter 7. Paragraph 3 is dealing with the revelation of the covenant. The covenant is revealed in the gospel. So, here we have the covenant revealed to us in the gospel. What does gospel mean? Good news. The good news of what? The good news of salvation by faith in Christ Jesus, right? So, the covenant is revealed to us in the good news that there is a Messiah who will save us. Where do we first see that in scripture? In the garden, right? In the promise made to Adam and Eve in the curse that is pronounced against the serpent. So, our confession says that this covenant is revealed in the good news, first of all, to Adam in the promise of salvation by the seed of the woman. So, our confession is rooting or founding the covenant of grace, the revelation of the covenant of grace, in the garden, not in the Mosaic covenant, which is where the Westminster Confession founds it. It's not It's not tying this covenant of grace to the old covenant, to the Mosaic covenant. The Westminster Confession goes back to the covenant at Sinai, and it actually uses this language. It says that the old covenant at Sinai and the new covenant of grace are one and the same under various dispensations. I always like to point out to Presbyterians that their confession is dispensational. Of course, that's not what they mean by it, but their confession is rooting the covenant of grace in the Mosaic covenant. That's where they're tracing it back to, which is interesting. They don't trace it to the Abrahamic covenant, which is where many of their arguments for infant baptism arise. But our confession is rooting it and grounding it in the garden, in the revelation made to Adam and Eve in the promise of an offspring of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent. And we see that right here in Genesis 315 in our proof text. I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. He shall crush or bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. So here's the curse being pronounced on the serpent in the garden and it is the promise or the revelation of the coming new covenant. Now what happens here is that this revelation of the gospel to Adam in the garden What happens with our confession versus the Westminster and the Savoy is this. Paragraph one is almost identical. Paragraph two of the Westminster is gone. We don't have it. Our paragraph two is very similar to their paragraph three. And then, paragraphs four through six of their confession are gone, and instead we have paragraph three. So our confession is much shorter in this way. We have three paragraphs, they have six. They spent a lot of time talking about the Mosaic Covenant and how those covenants are the same thing as the New Covenant under multiple administrations. But our confession is founding the revelation of the covenant in the garden, which means that our confession is actually looking at the covenant of grace and at our covenant theology and encompassing the full sweep of redemptive history from creation to fall, redemption, and consummation of the kingdom. This should not be a surprise to us that this chapter of our confession is majorly reworked from the Westminster and the Savoy because this argument of the progressive revelation of covenant and the covenant of grace particularly, is a major piece of the Baptist argument for the baptism of believers alone. So it shouldn't surprise us that this chapter is massively reworked. Probably the most important phrase in this paragraph is this one, by farther steps. The covenant of grace is revealed to Adam in the garden, and then by farther steps, it is progressively unfolded and revealed until the full discovery in the New Testament. So this farther steps is the fact that each of the following covenants in scripture reveals more information about the covenant of grace, but the covenant of grace is not actually established until Christ's blood is shed in the New Testament. And we can see this in the writings of some of our Baptist forefathers. Nehemiah Cox says, the gospel was preached to them, that is Israel, and he's referencing Hebrews 4.2, and so the covenant of grace revealed. So the covenant of grace is revealed to ethnic Israel, though more darkly in types and shadows through which they were instructed to seek justification unto life by Christ promised. And so deliverance from the curse of the law by him. So the old covenant, the Sinai covenant, the Mosaic covenant, all these old covenants were types and shadows. They weren't the covenant of grace, but they were revealing the covenant of grace. They were directing God's people towards the promises of the coming Messiah and the covenant of grace that would be established in him. We see the proof text for our confession here in Hebrews 1 verses 1 and 2. God who at various times and in various ways spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets has in these last days spoken to us by his son. So, In the times past, he spoke through the prophets and the various covenants that were administered, but now he has spoken through Christ as the new covenant has been established, the full discovery thereof in the New Testament. As Christ comes, the revelation of the gospel is complete in him. And so it is founded, we are told, in that eternal covenant, between the Father and the Son about the redemption of the elect. What covenant is this referencing right here? The covenant of redemption. The covenant that was made between God the Father and God the Son, that the Father would give the Son a people and that the Son would give himself for those people. So this is a reference to the covenant of redemption And this is a link to chapter eight, the next chapter, that will again speak about this covenant of redemption in which Christ became the mediator of the new covenant. So that's the reference there. Now the proof text here, who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose, and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began. There's a reference to the covenant of redemption between the Father and the Son. 2 Timothy 1.9, Titus 1.2, in hope of eternal life which God who cannot lie promised before time began. Again, a reference to the covenant of redemption between the Father and the Son. So this covenant that is being revealed to us, this covenant of grace, it tells us that it is alone by the grace of this covenant that all the posterity of fallen Adam that ever were saved did obtain life and blessed immortality, alone by the grace of this covenant. In other words, salvation has always been by faith in Christ. Faith in Christ before he came, faith in Christ after he came. This is the means of salvation. There is no other means of salvation. People were not saved in the Old Covenant by keeping the law. They were saved by believing the promises of a coming Messiah. We are not saved now by keeping the law. We're saved by believing in Christ who came and kept the law for us. So, we're utterly incapable, it tells us, of acceptance with God upon those terms on which Adam stood in his state of innocency." In other words, we can't keep the covenant of works, we can't keep the moral law, we can't obey the covenant that Adam failed to obey. He was innocent and he failed. We're sinful, so we're incapable of keeping this. The proof texts that go along with us show that even Abraham was saved by faith. But without faith, it is impossible to please him. For he who comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, were assured of them. So here we have promises and assurance, covenant. embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrim on the earth. Romans 4, what then shall we say that Abraham, our father, has found according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. If he kept the law, he's just done what was required of him. He's not merited anything. Nor is there salvation in any other. There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day and he saw it and was glad. So even Abraham was saved by faith in the promise of the Christ, the coming offspring of the woman. Now, what's interesting is here in chapter 7, we're focusing on the covenant of grace. There's no mention of the covenant of works, although we see the concept here a couple of times. When we get to chapter 20, of the gospel and of the extent of the grace thereof, the phrase covenant of grace isn't in that chapter. So we shouldn't fall prey to this fallacy known as the word concept fallacy, that because the phrase isn't there, the concept isn't there. The phrase doesn't have to be there for the concept to be there. The chapter on the gospel and the extent of the grace of the gospel obviously contains the concept of the covenant of grace, even though it doesn't use that phrasing. This chapter obviously contains the concept that there was a covenant of works with Adam in the garden, even though it doesn't use that phrase. But the main thrust of this chapter is that there is a covenant of grace that God has made voluntarily in which he saves us from the curse of the law and gives us the reward that Adam failed to obtain, but which Christ has obtained for us. And so James Renahan summarizes this entire chapter in one beautiful sentence when he says, the salvation of the elect is achieved by the Holy Spirit applying the promised and completed work of Christ according to the eternal purpose of God. So we have the Holy Spirit applying the completed work of Christ according to the purpose of God. Our salvation by way of covenant is inherently Trinitarian. The entirety of who God is is involved in condescending voluntarily to save us and to give us this reward that Adam failed to obtain but which Christ obtained for us. This is a glorious chapter that sets up the remaining main part of the confession as we deal with how man is saved according to grace through covenant. So let's close in a word of prayer.